Display stands made of cardboard or corrugated paper board are widely used for showing varieties of merchandises. Such stands are convenient to erect, low cost to produce and providing adequate durability for repeated uses. A stand may also be made by stamping its configuration on a single cardboard and then folding the various parts of the configuration to form the stand having both the display tray and the integral support base. Pictures and various decorations and advertising information may be printed on the stand for attracting the consumers's attention and interest of the merchandise. One drawback of such display stand is that the merchandise is placed within a tray such that it is not visible to the consumers and the merchandise is difficult to be removed from the tray for selection and purchase. Such drawback is alleviated by providing a display portion in the form of a plurality of stepped shelves such that the various items of the merchandise placed on the stepped shelves are clearly visible and may be conveniently selected and removed for examination and purchase.
However, when the display shelves and the supporting base are integrally formed with one single cardboard configuration, it is cumbersome to erect by a single person due to the necessity to fold a plurality of parts while holding some of the parts that have already been folded in order to fold other parts. Furthermore, the entire integral display shelves and supporting base when unfolded to a collapsed condition for storage and transportation is rather bulky for packaging.